Posted in Bloomsbury, performance, Vita Sackville-West, tagged Bloomsbury Group, Gloomsbury, Radio 4, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Woolf on the BBC on Wednesday 12 March 2014| 1 Comment »
Gloomsbury, a series on the BBC’s Radio 4, is a spoof of the Bloomsbury Group that follows the fortunes of
Its second season, which will air later this month, features the last performances of the late actor Roger Lloyd Pack who died nearly two months ago of pancreatic cancer. He plays the amorous gardener Gosling and long-suffering husband Lionel Fox.
Posted in events, Orlando, performance, play, tagged Orlando, Sarah Rughl, Virginia Woolf on Monday 3 March 2014| Leave a Comment »
Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending novel is on stage in two locations.
Posted in events, performance, play, Shakespeare's Sister Company, Susan Sellers, Virginia Woolf, William Shakespeare, Woolf events, tagged Beth WrightVanessa and Virginia, Shakespeare's Sister Company on Saturday 16 June 2012| 2 Comments »
Wright’s play premiered in Europe and tells the story of Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell. The evening will end with a few scenes from a play written by Shakespeare’s Sister’s, Kris Lundberg, about the love affair between famed artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his muse and model, Elizabeth Siddal.
The readings will commence in a Lower East Side sultry venue, the DL, located at 95 Delancey St. (at Ludlow) in the second floor Casino.
For more information, contact Kris Lundberg at info@shakespearessister.org or visit the Shakespeare’s Sister Company website.
Formed in 2008, The Shakespeare’s Sister Company (SSC) is a not-for-profit theater organization supporting women in the arts. It is committed to producing established works and new plays by female authors, as well as by Sir William Shakespeare. Its mission is to address global change through the theater, including workshops with the community and literacy for youth.
Posted in Mrs. Dalloway, performance, play, tagged Ellen Mclaughlin, Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway dollhouse, Septimus and Clarissa on Thursday 6 October 2011| 5 Comments »
So it is fitting that the stage adaptation of Septimus and Clarissa, running through Saturday at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City, is the product of many voices as well.
I was in the front row at last Saturday’s show. And like others who have reviewed the play written by Ellen Mclaughlin, I found myself overwhelmed by the power of Woolf’s words, the way they transformed the stage, and the way the stage adaptation made them ever more luminous and lyrical.
The starkly simple set features a mottled blue floor and wall with the words “Fear no more.”
Like many readers of Woolf, I have read her 1925 stream of consciousness novel multiple times and have written about it as well. So I wouldn’t have thought that a staged adaptation of the novel could keep me spellbound, could make me wonder what might happen next, could bowl me over with its emotional power. But that’s exactly what this production did.
Others have already done an excellent job of reviewing Septimus and Clarissa, commenting on its superb acting; its excellent blend of music, ambient sound and dialogue; its relevant anti-war message; and the way it captures the spirit and meaning of Woolf’s novel.
So I will do something a bit different here. I will talk about how another group of voices — the many voices of the performers, directors, writer and crew — shaped what appeared on the Baruch stage this fall.
I learned a bit about the shaping process at an after-show conversation held on stage Saturday evening. It was headlined by best-selling author and Barnard professor of English Mary Gordon. She settled in on stage with Rachel Dickstein, director; McLaughlin, who wrote the script and played the title character; Tommy Schrider, who played Septimus; and Miriam Silverman, who played both Lucrezia and Elizabeth Dalloway.
Mary Gordon, Rachel Dickstein and Ellen Mclaughlin
The shaping process was a long one that involved multiple workshops, with each workshop adding or subtracting things from the production up until the play’s formal opening in September. And everyone involved played a part that went beyond the one acknowledged in the formal program.
The actors, for example, helped work out the choreographed movements they make while voicing Woolf’s lyrical words in song, choreography that changed as the play progressed.
They also collaborated on the set design. When Dickstein brought a batch of large rectangular frames to the set, thinking they might add something interesting to the production, the actors experimented with them until they worked. And in the final production, three of the frames are moved around on stage, almost like dancing partners, to represent a changing array of doors and windows, with people going out and through and around them.
The idea for the moveable staircase itself, the most prominent element in the set design, came from Dickstein and set designer Susan Zeeman Rogers, but the actors suggested ways of using it, as well as other set pieces and props. Actor Schrider, a Septimus of power and emotional force, did improvisations on another staircase before the large black metal staircase became a part of the final set design. The large black metal staircase is a focal point throughout the play, as it serves as a platform for Mrs. Dalloway as hostess and both a battlefield and suicide site for Septimus.
Miriam Silverman and Tommy Schrider among the rose petals that drift over guests during the party scene
Also on the simply set, stark stage throughout the play are three white wooden houses about four feet high. They are rolled around the set on wheels to symbolize Clarissa’s country home of Bruton as well as the homes she and other characters see along the streets of London.
But one of the three is special, and here is where director Dickstein gives voice to her child self. She recalled encountering an elaborately detailed furnished dollhouse as a young girl, one that she could never afford. It was a memory and an image that stuck in her mind, and she asked set designer Zeeman Rogers to create a more modest version of such a house — Clarissa’s London house — for the play.
The Clarissa Dalloway dollhouse
The interior of this lit-up house, complete with the novel’s characters as free-standing paper dolls, is revealed during the scene that recreates Clarissa’s party. The symbolism of the dollhouse opening up to reveal its interior to the audience just as Clarissa opens her home to her guests has a certain magical charm with subtle but significant meaning.
Mrs. Dalloway’s party paper dolls with Clarissa in the center wearing the green dress she mended herself
Posted in Mrs. Dalloway, performance, play, tagged Septimus and Clarissa on Thursday 15 September 2011| 4 Comments »
Septimus and Clarissa finds hypnotic poetry in the ordinary, the solemn, the rapturous and just about everything in between.
The review also praises the play’s “airtight ensemble,” particularly Tom Nelis and Miriam Silverman; its “shadowy lighting;” and the “series of insightful, often haunting stage pictures” created by its set design.
“Woolf’s miniaturist masterpiece is instantly distilled into a thrilling and richly theatrical image” is yet another glowing phrase from the review.
I’m sold. Like a sweet freak longing for chocolate, my mouth is watering to see that play. If only I didn’t live in Ohio.
